Influencer Marketing

Harness the power

Influencer marketing

Essentially, marketing is all about influence, so influencer marketing is becoming a sure-fire strategy for businesses to get the edge on the competition.

It’s a fairly new concept in marketing. While word-of-mouth marketing and the idea of influencers has been around for some time, in the online context, this new concept works with industry leaders who can help your business through social media.

The first question most people as is (what is influencer marketing?), the answer is it’s, like we said above, something like word-of-mouth marketing, except this time your product or service is mentioned by a celebrity or industry influencer (hence the name). It’s like Elon Musk tweeting about this event he attended where he loved the idea of a new car engine design a rookie engineer brought to him.

He didn’t officially endorse the new design, but suddenly, all of Musk’s followers, including lots of big names, are thinking about the engineer and his design. His brand value has suddenly grown hundreds of times. Where nobody had heard of him yesterday, today everyone is following him on Instagram because Elon Musk just made him a star.

That’s the power of influencer marketing.

Influencer Marketing: 2017 is the Year to Do It

Forbes thinks so. In an article written in the fall of (need a date), Forbes said a lot of growth can be expected to utilize influencer marketing in 2017. The magazine talks at length about the growing need for businesses to reach a highly specific audience and this new branch of marketing is doing exactly that for them.

Come to think of it, marketing through influencers is another social media marketing strategy that has come to light only recently and is already gaining a lot of popularity within that short time. It makes all the sense to put it to use in your marketing strategy.

Influencers can give you access to thousands (if not more) of consumers who are your ideal target market. How can that be bad for business?

Not only do they bring you, potential customers, they are effectively sharing your content to their followers, giving you a long-term advantage by means of improved SEO statistics for your social profile and website.

Just about everybody these days has a social profile on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram (not to mention Snapchat etc.) and they follow celebrities they love and admire. If one of those celebrities endorses your work or products to their followers, why won’t these people rush to your page and maybe even try it out?

Social Media Influencer Marketing

There are a number of reasons why social media influencer marketing works. The Forbes article we mentioned earlier gives a great example of how Kylie Jenner was engaged by a not-so-famous brand of jeans. For the brand, Kylie put on a pair of jeans and posted a picture that received over 2 million likes and we don’t know how many people that led to the brand’s website or social media and eventually bought their product.

That’s just one of the many successful influencer marketing examples.

In an age when most consumers on social media either keep automatic ads off, using ad blockers or simply ignore them, brands are willing to invest in influencers with big numbers of followers to get direct access to new sources of their target audience with a greater chance of converting these consumers. Are you willing to do the same?

Influencer Marketing Strategy

In the age of social media, keeping an influencer marketing strategy amongst your promotional efforts is a very smart thing to do. This way you’re opening doors to large portions of the audience who would love to see or follow your business, and who are already following your industry influencers, which makes it highly likely that they will listen to your brand content, as well.

However, it’s no simple task. You will have to develop a strong strategy around which influencer to engage. So, you have to begin with knowing your options and making lists of industry influencers who can help your brand grow.

A good strategy will also include a number of ideas you can use to engage influencers you’re interested in. For instance, a simple strategy we share in our blog about using influencers on Instagram is a sure-fire way to get you noticed and could start a relationship where you get the chance to engage the influencer and earn new followers and, hopefully, customers for your own product or service.

Common Pitfalls of Influencer Marketing

Unfortunately, with all the attention this phenomenon is getting, a lot of businesses seem to be getting it wrong. There are a number of pitfalls that brands are constantly and repeatedly falling prey, and, if you’re thinking about getting into this mode of marketing, you should know what these mistakes are so you don’t make them, too.

The most common problem is not knowing your audience. This is a trap for any kind of marketing. Without knowing who your real customers are, you cannot build a strategy that works on the prospects because you are most likely targeting the wrong people.

Brands expect results for investing in their influencers right away. That doesn’t work in most cases. You need to remember influencer marketing is implemented with the intent to increase brand awareness, not sales. Not directly, in any case.

If you aren’t sure of what your marketing campaign should be doing, consequently you’ll miscommunicate goals with the influencers you engage. You need to be very clear about what you expect from the influencer and they should communicate clearly in return and tell you whether it’s doable or not.

Now that you know how effective marketing through influencers can be, it’s time you stopped ignoring this mode of marketing. Start using it to your advantage, and invest your advertising money in growing brand awareness through industry influencers instead.

Talk to us today and learn how we can build you the perfect social media influencer marketing campaign.

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